A worldview ministry to Australian families

Reformed Resources was established to encourage, help and disciple Australian families to take up their God-ordained responsibilities. We believe that Christ is reigning at the Father's right hand, even now. He is in the position of power and has sent His Church to disciple the world. The Gospel will not be thwarted, all the nations will joyfully turn to the Triune God of Scripture. Men and fathers have a major role in this historical redemptive narrative. Fathers are to turn their hearts back to the Law of God and their children. They are to disciple their families to trust and obey the Jesus as Lord and Saviour. By the work of the Holy Spirit empowering faithful obedience to the Law of God in every area of life our nation will be reformed and covenantally blessed by the hand of God. This starts with repentence, faith and worship. The Gospel changes everything. We believe that the good news is more than the saving of souls. It is that and the redemption of the whole world back to God in Christ through the historic triumph of the Church discipling the nations in everything Christ commanded.

The Roots

Even before the arrival of the Australoids (alias the 'Blackfellows'), several waves of migrants had already come to the World's Southernmost Continent inhabitable by man. One such group was the Negritos, or Mimi people. Traces of their earlier occupancy of Mainland Australia can still be found in the Northern Territory, and near Cairns in Queensland.

Thereafter, various tribes of Australoids (today often called 'Aboriginals'), arrived at different times from the north or from the northwest. They displaced not only one another, but also finally drove off the Mimi Negritos from the Mainland and into Tasmania — where the last full-bloods finally died out about a century and a half ago. Today, there are at least 4000 living mixed-blood descendants1 of the Black Tasmanian Negrito or Mimi people. Their ancestors were altogether quite distinct in culture, language and race2 from those of the present Black Australoids who displaced them.

Already in 1898, Prof. Dr. Alan Carroll (M.A.., D.Litt., Ph.D., D.Sc., &c.) - one of the World's greatest ethnologists — published a paper in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Australasia. Dr. Carroll stated: "The present black people [viz. the Mainland Black Australians] belong to the neolithic...stone-age and culture....Previous and older blacks [the ancestors of the Black Tasmanians]...were in Australia in the palaeolithic age and culture.... They...were...very different in all ways to the Australian Blacks" alias those today often called Aborigines. The latter then killed the men and appropriated the womenfolk of the former.3

The Marxist Prof. Manning Clark on the Mainland Australoids' oppression of the Negritos

For years, Professor Dr. Manning Clark was gaining a reputation and being built up as Australia's greatest Historian. In 1962, Clark insisted4 with some degree of objectivity at the very beginning of his multi-volume work titled A History of Australia: "Civilization did not begin in Australia until the last quarter of the eighteenth century.... The early inhabitants of the Continent created cultures, but not civilizations.

"The first of these were the Negrito people — short, dark-skinned, curly-haired and broad-nosed - who were forced to migrate...by the movement into those areas of people of a higher material culture...."Later, another people arrived - the Murrayians, who were related to the Ainu in Japan and either destroyed the Negritos or drove them into the valleys behind Cairns and south into what is now Tasmania. Then in turn the Murrayians were challenged and displaced by the Carpentarians - a people probably related to the Vedda of Ceylon...."This account is based on [the South Australian Ethnologist] N. Tindale and J. Birdsell's Results of the Harvard-Adelaide Universities' Anthropological Expedition 1938-39: [re] Tasmanian Tribes in North Queensland (in Records of the South Australian Museum),5 and H.A. Lindsay's [article] The First Australians.6 Neither the Negritos nor the Murrayians, nor indeed the Carpentarians, made the advance from barbarism to civilization.... The failure of the aborigines to emerge from a state of barbarism deprived them of the material resources with which to resist an invader, and left them without the physical strength to protect their culture." Thus Manning Clark.

Even in 1963, Prof. Clark was still reminding people that it was the Negritos who came here first — forced south by "a superior material culture" (namely those from whom Australia's present tribal peoples have descended). Significantly, however - with the changing whims of left-wing political hacks and their academic hangers-on, the 'politically-correct' Clark's 1986 "revised...edition" omits this material - and betrays subsequent concessions to the by-then world-wide and still-rising tide of Third-World Anti-Colonialism. Indeed, only much later would his deepening Marxist biases and Communist sympathies be brought to light.

Earlier, however, Clark's writings were free from such overt leftist bias. Here, for example, is the relevant section from his original 1963 book A Short History of Australia — the section expurgated in subsequent editions thereof from 1969 onward: "So far there have been four migrations of people to Australia.... The first...were the Negritos, who were forced to move south...by people with a superior material culture. They were followed by the Murrayians, a people related to the Ainu in Japan. They in turn were pushed further south in Australia by the Carpentarians, who were related to the Vedda in Ceylon...."The Negritos became the aborigines of Tasmania; the Murrayians were driven to the east and west coasts of the mainland...; the Carpentarians remained in the tropical fringes of the northern coast.... The fourth [migration]...brought the Europeans."7 (Allemphases mine — F.N. Lee.)

Writing in New Life,8 the eminent Australian archaeologist Dr. Clifford Wilson drew attention to "details of rock art in Kakadu National Park where the oldest known art predates the rise of the sea level some 6000 years ago.... Most images are drawings of highly active people.... Aborigines say the art belongs to an earlier group they call the Mimi people.... This could have an important bearing on the vexed question of Aboriginal land rights."

In 1993, Scott Plowman in the Sydney Morning Herald cited the Australian ethnologists N.B. Tindale and H.A. Lindsay — whom Prof. Manning Clark himself had formerly referred to with approval9 — as regards the ancestors of Australia's Black Mainlanders encountered by Captain Cook in 1770. Of those Black Mainlanders, Plowman then wrote:10 "These intruders migrated from Asia and Indonesia...hopping from island to island.... They became the current Australian Aborigines. The little people, who were there first, were harassed and killed and continually driven south.... The tall men...left the [Negrito] pygmies isolated...in Tasmania.... It is not sustainable that our current Aborigines can claim first-use land rights.... Did the current original [viz. Mainland Black] Australians pay as much respect and compassion to the pygmies' sacred sites, as they [today's Black Mainlanders] demand from the rest of us?" No way!

The Europeans were the first to bring civilization to Australia

Even according to the leftist Manning Clark, civilization arrived in Australia only with the arrival of the Europeans. The entire Continent of Australia was colonized from 1788 onward chiefly by the Anglo-Celts from England, Ireland and Scotland They were Japhethites — the Caucasian seed or descendants of Japheth, the blessed son of Noah. For Noah had predicted: "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem" by way of which Jesus Christ the Messiah and His Gospel would come into the World. Genesis 9:27 to 10:5 cf. Acts 1:6-8 & 10:1 to 11:19f with Isa. 41:1-6 & 42:1-12 & 49:1-22f & 60:3-5 & 66:12-19f. Those Japhethitic Anglo-Celts embraced Christianity; later went forth from the British Isles, and finally settled in the large and spacious "Deepest South" — way "Down Under" in the "Southland" of Australia, under the starry southern sky and its "Southern Cross."

First, they established the mother colony of New South Wales in 1788. After expansion westward — Tasmania was colonized, in 1825. Next, Western Australia was established, in 1829; then South Australia, in 1836. Victoria came into being in 1851; and then Queensland, in 1859.

The Commonwealth of Australia and its Federal Government were constituted by the people of those six States in 1900 and thereafter. The Northern Territory itself was constituted from South Australia already in 1863; later placed under federal jurisdiction in 1911; and soon expects to become the seventh State on the Continent of Australia.

Other Australian territories are found near Asia in the North — and right down to the polar regions in the South. Too, various Australian island dependencies are located all the way from the Indian Ocean in the West — to the South Pacific in the East.

All of the dependencies, states, and territories together comprise the Commonwealth of Australia. After Russia, it is by far the biggest country on our planet. Consisting of the entire Continent of Australia and half of the Continent of Antarctica as well as many off-coast islands — Australia is a (con)federation, and today the largest English-speaking country in the World.

Now the Triune God made the World and all things in it, seeing He is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. From one blood, He made all nations of men — in order that they may dwell on all the face of the Earth. He determined the appointed times and boundaries of their habitation, so that they should seek the Lord. He now commands all men everywhere to repent, for He has appointed a day in which He will judge the World in righteousness by the Second Adam. God assured us of this final judgment, by raising up that Second Adam (Jesus Christ) from the dead. Acts 17:24-31.

God created the first Adam hardly earlier than 4000 B.C. All men who have ever lived, descend from that Adam and also from his wife Eve whom God placed in a garden in Eden near four rivers in Mesopotamia, with God's Law written on his heart (Eccl. 7:29 cf. Rom. 3:14f). So the theories that Black Australians are '(ab-)origin-al' to Australia, or that they have lived in that Continent for at least 25 000 to 40 000 years, is radically false. Genesis 2:7 to 11:9f.

When the Most High God divided to the nations their inheritance and separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the children of Israel — His very Own covenant people. Also the Israelites were tainted by sin. However, in their case they also received God's special revelation and His statutes in Holy Scripture to guide and to preserve them. Deuteronomy 7:15f & 32:8.

By His grace, the Almighty permitted especially Gomer and his descendants, as the first-mentioned sons of the blessed Japheth, to dwell in the tents of the Lord God of the Shemites as the covenant people. So, God's revelation in general — and Christianity as its fulfilment and completion — was to be preserved particularly among Gomer's descendants the Britons and their Common Law (of which latter, God's revelation and Christianity are part and parcel). Genesis 9:27 to 10:2f.

God has not left Himself without witness to His Law — even among the heathen. For whenever pagans who do not have the Law, by nature do the things contained in the Law — they are a law unto themselves. Indeed, they still show the work of the Law as having been written in their hearts — their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Christ according to the Gospel. Romans 1:18 to 2:16.

So there are indeed some few elements of righteousness also in pagan customs (including those of all the various diverse and uncivilized tribal peoples of Australia also prior to its colonization from the British Isles in 1788 A.D. However, there are far more elements of righteousness in British Common Law — because of its massive exposure to God's special revelation and Christianity for many centuries especially prior to 1788 A.D. On this, see Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke —and Law Professor and Solicitor-General Sir William Blackstone.

This certainly means that whatever God regards as generally acceptable in the customs of the tribal peoples of Australia, must be respected and protected by all men of good will. Yet whatsoever therein is not good, should be neither ethically respected nor legally protected — but rather simply abandoned to the judgment of time.

So too, whatsoever God regards as evil in Western civilization — should be abandoned for certain extinction. However, the bulk of Western civilization before 1788 was good. British Common Law was, and is, its covenantal crown. As such, it should be respected and protected — and is destined for certain expansion.

Captain James Cook brought Blackstone's Common Law to Australia, and it took root in that Continent from the time of the 1788 Settlement. As much of it as is appropriate to Australia, is the law of the land. Since 1788, it has grown further within its Australian environment — also absorbing just as much from the native customs of this Continent as Australian Common Law itself considers to be useful. Modern humanistic United Nations' Conventions, however, as the brainchild of that organization and of the French Revolution of 1789 and of the Anti-Christian Verlichtung which sired them both — are by and large irreconcilable with Australian Common Law and should not be heeded whenever they clash therewith.

Regarding tribal title, after sixty years' continual possession of land or goods by a non-owner, the unchallenging owner of that land or those goods forfeits his ownership rights. The continual possessor becomes the new owner. Too, the 1607f case of Robert Calvin determined: "If a Christian king should conquer a kingdom of an infidel..., ipso facto the laws of the infidel are abrogated. For they be not only against Christianity; but against the Law of God and of nature contained in the Decalogue."11

Throughout the ongoing growth process of Australian Common Law, continuing tribal customs should be subject to it — but never vice-versa. But Australian Common Law itself is to remain subject to the Law of God and to the Christian Religion. For the Decalogue and Christianity are part and parcel — of Australian Common Law.

"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter . Fear God, and keep His Commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing — whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Ecclesiastes 12:13f.

The Christian Roots of the Australian Constitution

Now at its outset, the Australian Constitution states it was fashioned "humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God" — on "9th July 1900" A.D. It thus goes back to the time of Christ's incarnation, and even earlier.

Professor F.L.W. Wood, author of The Constitutional Development of Australia, notes12 how Pre-Christian Greeks presumed there was a great Southern Continent. He even suggests that some of Adam's descendants might well have travelled there.

The Bible agrees. God created Adam and all his descendants, telling them to rule over the Earth by way of His Ten Commandments written in every heart. Gen. 1:26f; 2:15f; Eccl. 7:29; Ex. 20:1-17; Rom. 1:19f & 2:14f.

Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke13 held in 1613 that "God is the Fountain and Founder of all good laws and constitutions.... The law itself is a light. Proverbs 6:23. See Romans 2:14.... The 'light of nature'...Solomon called 'the candle' of Almighty God. Proverbs 20:27."

Sir Owen Dixon seemed to agree. He was Chief Justice of Australia from 1952 till 1964. Then recognized as perhaps the finest living Jurist in the English-speaking World,14 he referred to the Common Law (and its Rule of Law) as the "ultimate constitutional foundation."15

End notes

This article was written by the late Dr Francis Nigel-Lee's and is an excerpt from his work titled The Historical Roots of the Australian Constitution. You can download the entire pamphlet if PDF here and you can visit Dr Nigel-Lee's honorary website here.

Rebuilding Australia

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A worldview ministry to Australian families

Reformed Resources was established to encourage, help and disciple Australian families to take up their God-ordained responsibilities. We believe that Christ is reigning at the Father's right hand, even now. He is in the position of power and has sent His Church to disciple the world. The Gospel will not be thwarted, all the nations will joyfully turn to the Triune God of Scripture. Men and fathers have a major role in this historical redemptive narrative. Fathers are to turn their hearts back to the Law of God and their children. They are to disciple their families to trust and obey the Jesus as Lord and Saviour. By the work of the Holy Spirit empowering faithful obedience to the Law of God in every area of life our nation will be reformed and covenantally blessed by the hand of God. This starts with repentence, faith and worship. The Gospel changes everything. We believe that the good news is more than the saving of souls. It is that and the redemption of the whole world back to God in Christ through the historic triumph of the Church discipling the nations in everything Christ commanded.